The present invention relates to conversational client-server applications, and more particularly, relates to the field of dynamic dialogues between a mobile telecommunication terminal and a network or a server for applications and services, using interactive interfaces. The invention provides to the terminal to reach a server or other terminals, dialogue, navigate, exchange information, download applications and data (text, video, audio, images and other), and use different applications and services.
The present invention relates to mobile telephony, expanding new features and interactive services, and a convergence of dialogue between heterogeneous devices, such as mobile phones, mobile devices, digital applications and services platforms, Internet servers, third parties services and equipments, and others. Moreover, the invention provides the additional requirement of highly useful ergonomics for terminal users, such as real time services requirements, which are in accordance with the resource constraints of mobile infrastructures (servers, networks bandwidths, real time constraints) and mobile terminals (limited processing, storage and display capacities).
A technical problem to be solved is thus to provide generic client-server systems, to implement and use protocols, with dynamic, interactive, intuitive features, that are easy to use and also allow fact integration, and with low resources consumption. To this need is added the requirements of inter-operability, customization and deployment.
Consequently, a technical problem to be solved is to provide a client-server system for applications and services allowing the set up of multiple and reusable applications and services with the lowest possible costs, targeting a large number of users. An objective is also to satisfy the requirement to have interactive services compliant with existing and emergent technologies, without costly implementations, and preferably, with few modifications of the equipment managed by network operators. Another objective is the requirements of providing such applications and services, with few modifications to the user terminals, while providing a dynamic, interactive, user-friendly interface, and satisfying real time constraints.
An important objective is to have means to reach a variety of information with only short delays. Also, this objective relates to obtaining information via the telecommunication network from a mobile terminal in local mode, or in roaming or nomad mode.
Thus, the significant capacity constraints of the terminals must be taken into account, as well as network performance and inherent ergonomics problems.
Furthermore, in client-server systems the problem exists of distributing the “intelligence” of different portions of 25 services between the network and the terminal.
The term “intelligence” includes the capability to decide the management or the execution of an action, a process, or data processing. For example, “intelligence” is used with the aim of providing complementary functional possibilities, flexibility and independence, versus constraints and/or users needs.
In order to address this problem, various documents of the prior art relate to embedded clients on mobile terminals, either compliant with the networks and mobiles terminals constraints, at the expense of ergonomics, or providing functional and user-friendly user interface, at the expense of the quality of service (response time, number of proposed services).
These documents provide technical solutions to the client-server model, for which a client connects to a server with special means to reach information, navigate, download, save or transfer applications and data.
The prior art provides different approaches which, however, address only limited and punctual aspects of this problem, without solving the global technical problem, i.e. to find and optimal point between the equipments constraints (networks and terminals), real time aspects, ergonomics and number of features and services.
Concrete applications and services are possible based on navigation using standard protocols that are WEB like (World Wide W6eb or Internet), such as HTTP protocols (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), XML (Extended Markup Language, and extended markup language for describing and analyzing date), IP (Internet Protocol) or others, in combination with standard transport protocols TCP (Transmission Control Protocol, one of the basic protocols for IP data transmission), UDP (User Datagram Protocol; protocol for data transmission being part of the TCP/IP protocol) and others, which do not guarantee the desired response time for the queries, therefore failing with regard to the real-time services constraint.
Another approach known from the prior art is to limit the scope of the access to some services and applications based on simplified protocols taking into account the limited capabilities of mobile phones, for example the WAP protocol (Wireless Application Protocol), especially designed for mobile phones. However, this approach is at the expense of ergonomics aspects and multi services, without ensuring compliance with real-time services.
Finally, a major effort is focused on clients applications embedded in mobile phones that satisfy the characteristics of ergonomics and aesthetics. However, they unfortunately require installing dedicated software on the terminal, which is demanding in terms of mobile terminal resources, but does not guarantee real-time services.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,103,018 relates to a communication terminal initiating a WAP session (Wireless Session Protocol) by sending a query to the server. The query includes an identification of the required data, as an identification number provided from the server. According to this identification number of the terminal, i.e. of the user, the server identifies the terminal versus identification data in a database associated with this user. Information regarding user's profile indicates the data format that can be managed by the terminal. When the server responds to the request, it sends data corresponding to the format defined by the user profile.
However, this document is limited to a data type predetermined by the profile of each user, by the data format to be sent and by the capacity of transport channels and does not offer the flexibility of a WEB browser type. Based on WAP technologies, this solution provides neither a guaranteed response time, nor a high level of ergonomics.
WO 03030026 concerns the redirection of content from a content server, by applying a special definition for this content. The content and the accompanying definitions are then sent to the device over the cellular network. The browser installed on the device is programmed to recognize the definition and to put an appropriate indicator on the content, the indicator defines how the device uses the contents, especially by defining that the content will not remove this content from the memory, even emptying the cache to free up disk space.
Nevertheless, this document proposes data and content recognition according to the mobile terminal capabilities and is limited to a restricted number of features, services, uses and data access.
EP 1874018 relates to markup language specifications that are defined to provide pseudo-rich media during phone calls, and implements two end times that support these specifications. Each implemented end items functions as mid-phone and mid-navigator, where the telephone call is partly a traditional duplex audio stream between the callers, completed by pseudo-rich media transmitted from one to the other. However, data and voice applications are distinct and the data are transmitted through separate channels, i.e. a splitting is applied in steps to request content from a given channel and steps to receive data from several other separate channels.
Also, many documents of the prior art relate to navigation clients embedded in mobile devices, having aesthetic and ergonomic user interfaces, which are allowed to reach standard WEB pages, to display the WEB pages and to navigate them. However, this high level of ergonomics and diversity are provided to the detriment of the quality of service, in terms of guaranteed channel and response time, and are of high complexity in terms of implementation resources.
In summary, the prior art does not proposed entire complete services such as navigation in real time, nor does the prior art satisfy the requirements and objectives of the above mentioned client-server systems for mobile telecommunications.